Arthur woke to the sound of gently lapping water. He blinked his eyes carefully open, squinting against the initial glare of the sun as he rolled himself over and up onto his feet. The ground beneath him was made of rock- a deep, dark brown in colour that stretched out and then up, curving up around them to form the walls of what appeared to be a canyon. Surrounded on three sides by sheer rock, Arthur looked out in the direction he assumed they were to follow in this level and felt a prickling of unease.

He took a few cautionary steps forward, his shoes sinking into soft sand as rock turned to beach which in turn yielded itself to an expanse of murky water.

Arthur shot him a look of distaste. “Surely we can’t be expected to swim this entire level.”

“Why not? Mario had to do it.” Eames’ hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his suit jacket again. Arthur frowned at him.

“We should take it in turns to dive under,” Cobb said. They turned to look at him, seeing that he was already stripping out of his suit. “Anything could be lurking underneath,” he added darkly.

Arthur winced slightly. He was really starting to hate this game.

Beside him, Eames began to strip. With a put upon sigh, Arthur reluctantly began to remove his own suit and shoes. He couldn’t quite bring himself to discard his clothing quite as haphazardly as Eames and Cobb had, and found himself wasting a good minute or two folding his suit and placing his shoes beside it.

Dressed only in a pair of boxers, an undershirt and his shoulder holster, Arthur turned back towards Eames and Cobb. Eames was standing in only a pair of black shorts, his own shoulder holster sans gun now carrying- Arthur squinted- what looked to be the mushroom Yusuf had given him.

“No pockets,” Eames shrugged at the scrutiny. Arthur nodded, turning to Cobb who was similarly attired as him. Cobb nodded at him and then turned to the water, hesitating. The water looked calm. It was just murky enough to hide its depth (and whatever lurked beneath). Cobb stepped in, the water lapping almost encouragingly at his feet.

“It’s pretty warm,” he said, as though it were some kind of consolation. It wasn’t. Arthur remembered playing the water worlds when he was a kid. It was perhaps his least favourite level of all times. He’d rather take on Bowser with his bare fists than step foot into the water before him, water he was more positive than not was swarming with all manner of vile and dangerous creatures intent on ending them.

“Right then,” Eames muttered, before jogging forward and diving straight into the water. Arthur took an involuntary step forward, wincing at the splash as Eames disappeared beneath the surface. He popped up soon after however, treading water, and raising his eyebrows at the pair of them.

Cobb followed next, wading his way into the water, every step swallowing him up bit by bit until he was up to his neck; arms fanning out on either side of him as he kept himself afloat. The look he shot Arthur was more insistent than Eames’ and Arthur felt his stomach knot with dread as he moved quickly forward, trying not to think about whatever was in the water as he felt the sand beneath his clenching toes disappear the further forward he half-stepped, half-swam until he was bobbing up beside Eames and Cobb.

“How’re we going to do this?” he asked, wishing he thought of this before he’d gotten in.

“It’s pretty clear once you break the muck on top,” Eames said, smiling more sedately. He lifted a hand to push back the fringe of hair that slipped forward into his face. “If at least one of us stays under at a time, we can keep a look out for anything unsavoury.”

Arthur was in the process of nodding his agreement along with Cobb when he felt something brush up against his leg. He twisted violently in the water, cursing; gun out of his holster before he’d even properly formed the thought to arm himself.

“What is it?” Cobb asked urgently, pulling his own gun out and watching the water warily, head turning this way and that.

“Something touched me,” Arthur gasped out, feeling as though his heart had just taken up permanent lodgings in his throat.

“Oh for the love of-!” Arthur re-holstered his gun with jerky motions, fear turning to anger.

“Art—” Eames began. Arthur’s glare cut him off.

“I’ll go first,” Arthur spontaneously announced before diving down. And although he missed it, Eames yelped- loudly- when Arthur grabbed his leg on the way down.

- - -

Instead of the expected Cheep-Cheeps, which would have been more than enough of a problem for them, they were instead treated to some kind of mutant version with spines and piranha-like teeth and they didn’t just float aimlessly past or wait until you were in their personal space before they did anything about you, oh no, these things attacked on sight. En force!

“Damnit, Eames, stop being such a baby,” unsurprisingly it was Cobb who spoke out against Eames’ bitching as, not even ten minutes into this new level, they’d found themselves swimming for their lives through a shoal of these new and improved mutant-Cheeps.

On the plus side, Arthur observed, their guns worked wondrously well under water.

On the not-so plus side, he lamented, tearing a large strip from the bottom of his undershirt and using it as a make-shift bandage for Eames’ ankle where one of the creatures had tried to rip out a chunk of his flesh, Eames hadn’t had a gun with which to defend himself.

During their mad dash away from the shoal Cobb had noticed that along the walls of the canyon were little ledges. They were barely deep enough to lift themselves up onto, and definitely weren’t frequent enough to harbour any illusions about climbing their way across this level, but they offered some modicum of safety as they regrouped, regained their breaths, and patched up a griping Eames who was more than a little pissed off at all but becoming fish food.

Arthur let his fingers linger on the foot he held in his lap, the make-shift bandage pulled tight and secure. The bite, though plenty deep, didn’t seem to be bleeding as profusely as Arthur had thought it would be. Then again, once they were back in the water…

“I don’t think so. I can definitely feel it, it just stings like a mother—”

“Right then,” Cobb started, lowering himself off the ledge, “if you’re good to go, we should get moving.”

“You want to go back in there?!” Eames gaped at him. The water had only just stopped frothing with mutant-Cheeps trying to leap up and take a bite out of them.

“We can’t just sit here all day,” Cobb pointed out, his derision clear, “We’re on a timer, in case you forgot.”

“It’s a bit hard to forget, Cobb.” Arthur couldn’t shake the image of Satio’s body just crushing in on itself as they ran out of time. He winced inwardly.

“Then maybe you could think about how much time Ariadne’s already had to spend with that monster?”

“Jesus, Cobb,” Eames pulled his foot from Arthur’s lap. For a brief moment, Arthur panicked that he was about to kick Cobb off the ledge with it. Instead he rotated his ankle, wincing as the muscles pulled and strained at the movement, before finishing with: “You can be a right prick sometimes, I hope you know that.”

Cobb didn’t look even the least bit phased, his expression as firm and stubborn as ever. Arthur pulled out his gun, checked the magazine and winced, outwardly this time.

“I think I saw some of those boxes up ahead.” He shoved the magazine back in, his intentions clear as he looked first at Eames and then at Cobb. They both nodded in silence.

“Right then,” Arthur said, and as one they dropped from their ledge of safety and back into the murky depths below them.

- - -

Arthur was beginning to think that they would drown in this world long before they made it to the end. They’d been swimming for what felt like hours, sometimes taking turns beneath the water, sometimes with no choice but to hold their breaths for minutes on end as the canyon above them squeezed in on itself forming terrifyingly dark underwater caverns they had no choice but to swim blindly through.

Not a man prone to dramatics, Arthur really didn’t think he was going to last much longer like this. If they weren’t half-drowning from exhaustion or just half-drowning in general, they were ploughing through the water with desperate strokes trying to out swim whatever horror they thought may have been chasing them through the dark. That was just for the creatures they couldn’t see. Arthur was pretty sure he was never going to go swimming again if he made it out of this alive.

The canyon around them finally yawned back open, the sunlight high above them an almost welcome relief after traversing through their third underwater cave.

Arthur’s face fell with dread as he noticed yet another upcoming cave.

“I don’t think I can take much more of this,” Eames muttered, echoing Arthur’s own thoughts. He was breathing deeply and swam low in the water; his mouth disappearing beneath the surface on every downwards bob. Arthur nodded his head in agreement. Even Cobb was looking decidedly worse for wear.

“We haven’t come across anything yet,” Cobb tried, his voice placating. “There may not even be anything in these caves.”

Arthur closed his eyes warily. He couldn’t even bring himself to chew Cobb out for quite probably jinxing them for this next cave.

And then the sunlight started to fade.

The three of them looked worryingly skywards, watching as the sky high above them began to darken with ominous looking clouds.

“I have maybe a half-dozen shots left,” Arthur offered, miserably, expecting to see another Lakitu darting into sight. Eames lifted a spare magazine one of the shimmering boxes had deigned to spit up. Cobb had a fresh magazine already clipped into his own gun.

The sky continued to darken, the water around them turning suddenly choppy, jerking their tired bodies around almost viciously.

“I don’t like this,” Eames said, glaring at everything and nothing in particular.

“There’re some ledges along the wall there—” Cobb pointed to the left side of the canyon.

“We’ll be smashed against them if we go for them,” Arthur warned.

“Better than whatever the hell is about to happen,” Eames reasoned, arms already moving in strong, broad strokes as he dragged himself towards the wall.

The water seemed to get even more violent around them, seeming to pull them back two strokes for every one they made towards the wall, as if trying to pull them towards the centre of the canyon.

Eames reached the wall first, finally, his fingers slippery in their purchase, his face a scrunch of pain as he was shoved bodily against the rock. Cobb arrived several minutes afterwards, his face pale with exertion, limbs trembling as he clung to another ledge, unable to even contemplate trying to pull himself up out of the water.

Arthur grit his teeth, legs kicking hard, arms reaching and fingers stretching as he tried his damndest to reach the side of the canyon.

“Arthur, move your damned arse!” Eames’ yell was almost lost to the sound of water rushing against his ears. He wanted to yell back, ‘what do you think I’m doing?’ but he could barely grab enough breath as it was without wasting it on trying to speak.

“Arthur!” Cobb’s voice sounded this time and Arthur felt his adrenaline spike. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. And more than likely behind him and-

He let lose a cry as he felt something take hold of his legs in a sucking hold. He swallowed water in his panic, coughing and struggling against the invisible force holding fast to his kicking legs as it pulled him inch by excruciating inch away from the wall, away from-

“Eame-!” His next cry was lost as his head dipped below the surface momentarily. He came up coughing, his throat burning, his limbs burning with fatigue even through his panic.

He felt himself being spun around, sucked ever closer towards the centre. It took him far too long to realise that there was some kind of whirlpool in progress. He managed to gasp one last breath before he was sucked completely under the water.

The last thing he heard was Eames’ panicked shouting.

- - -

Like a ragdoll, Arthur was thrown around without care or caution, his body intermittently smashing into what felt like rock as he was dragged forever downwards; spinning and spiralling until he lost all sense of direction, all sense of time. He curled his body into as tight a ball as he could manage and tried to ignore the pain and the terror and the way his lungs were burning so badly, the way his chest was heaving abortively against his refusal to breathe because to breathe was to die and he really, really didn’t want to die.

He felt himself being jerked suddenly to the side, the water around him gathering pressure before erupting like a geyser, and Arthur found himself being launched right up out of the water. He reached his pinnacle with a gasp of glorious, beautiful, fresh air before gravity dragged him back down, slamming his body unceremoniously onto a ground that felt as hard and unforgiving as stone, stealing the breath back from his aching lungs.

Lying prone in a sodden, sandy mess, Arthur could barely do anything more than turn his head to the side and gasp in pant after agonising pant of air. His entire body felt as though it were on fire. There was not one bit of him that didn’t feel abused, that didn’t hurt simply with him thinking about it. He clenched his eyes closed, focussing his thoughts on breathing, just breathing, whilst concurrently willing the turmoil of his emotions back under wraps, and getting a hold of himself enough to roll over onto his back.

He dragged one hand over his face, brushing loose clumps of sand. His face felt hot and raw under the brilliance of the sun after the chilling dark of his journey underwater. His fingers came away sticky and Arthur narrowed his eyes, seeing blood upon his fingertips. He frowned, pushing himself upwards with a groan and touching his fingers back to his head. He located a cut just above his left ear, the wound sticky with congealing blood. He pressed his hand against it, hissing as it flared sharply.

With a frown, Arthur tried to remember when he’d hit his head. He couldn’t. He felt as though he’d just about hit every other part of his body after being sucked through the whirlpool, just not his head, which he’d held protected in his arms for most of the terrifying journey.

He looked around then, turning his neck slowly from side to side, wondering if he’d maybe hit a stone or something after being unceremoniously spat out of the water. Instead, Arthur found himself blinking in disbelief, staggered to find that he could see the fortress they’d been trying to reach just a few breast-strokes ahead of him. Momentarily forgetting the rest of his aches and pains, he moved, standing slowly to his feet and shakily taking in his immediate surroundings.

Arthur found himself standing on what appeared to be some kind of Desert Island. The area around him was thick with golden-brown sand, and though it had hurt terribly when he’d been slammed bodily into it, Arthur found it to be temptingly soft as he dug his toes into its welcoming warmth.

There was a small cluster of palm trees almost directly in the centre of the island, large brown rocks dotted sporadically around them and above those rocks shimmered more of the boxes they kept coming across in the levels. Beyond it all Arthur could see the canyon stretching away from him and assumed it to be the same the one he’d been swimming through with Eames and Cobb.

Something lurched in his chest at the thought of them both and he wondered where they were now.

He looked over his shoulder, towards the fortress, and hesitated, wondering if he should make his way there or wait here for the other two. On the one hand the fortress looked dark and foreboding compared to this island paradise he found himself upon. On the other, he suspected that there was no safer place than the fortress on this entire level.

In his hesitation, Arthur noticed movement coming from the other side of the island- small ripples of sand moving in a serpentine motion, growing larger and moving quicker the closer it came to him.

Arthur took a hurried step backwards, throwing himself with a small wince to the right just as a large worm-like creature launched itself from beneath the surface; its sand covered body landing with a crunching sound in the space he’d only seconds ago been standing, before sinking back into the sand and disappearing from sight.

His gun had been in his hand the moment he’d moved, his grip uncommonly tight as he lay there gaping and wide-eyed and watching as the creature sank back beneath the sand. He saw the sand rippling as it moved below the surface before disappearing altogether.

Heart pumping, Arthur carefully pushed himself up onto his knees, movements measured and vigilant as he swept his eyes around his surroundings. Nothing moved. Not even the large fanning leaves on the palm trees. Arthur lifted himself from his knees to his feet, gritting his teeth against the stiffness he felt in his limbs.

He was just reconsidering heading to the fortress when he heard a whisper-soft sound of motion behind him; like the sound of sand running quickly through ones fingers, or, in this case, of it running off the back of the creature once again launching itself out of the sand towards him.

Arthur twisted with a yell, his gun coming up, finger already pulling on the trigger as he sighted the creature and shot. The hit took it right in its gaping maw; rows of splintered teeth going three layers deep snapping suddenly shut as the creature paused, its segmented body shuddering a moment before the head abruptly exploded in a shower of sand and blood and guts.

Arthur fell back, scrambling away from the worst of it, half-coughing and half-retching at the stench that rose up from what had moments ago been a head. Warily, he watched as the rest of the creature’s segmented body wavered, as if undecided, before crashing to the sand in a coiled heap. Too tense to feel even a transitory satisfaction, Arthur instead shuffled forward again, gun aimed and ready as he approached the body with caution.

Upon closer inspection he noticed that it wasn’t quite like a worm after all. The creature’s body seemed to be composed of five spherical segments without the head, with each segment only tentatively attached to the other by what appeared to be a thick glue-like substance. It was this substance that gave the creature its colour, sticking to the sand around it and coating itself in chunky clumps of the stuff.

The body before him shuddered then and Arthur cursed aloud, scrambling backwards once more as a spasm seemed to run through each individual segment before the one closest to where the head had been split itself open with a small popping sound to reveal-

“You have got to be kidding me,” Arthur breathed out, bringing his gun up to bear as the topmost segment of the creature’s body morphed itself into a head; large black eyes blinking slowly awake just as the slit of a mouth began to rip its way open, revealing the same splintered tooth smile he’d seen on the initial one.

Not wasting a second more, Arthur took no pains in shooting this second head square through its beady eyes, watching as it exploded in a repetitive shower of sand and blood and guts.

Four shots left. Maybe. If he’d had six left to begin with, that is. He considered shooting the rest of the segments, just in case, but the thought of wasting what remained of his ammo stayed his hand. There had to be another way to kill this thing.

A whisper of sand sounded then and Arthur stilled, turning his attention on the unmoving body of the creature before him. The sound came again, but not from in front of him. His entire body tensed itself and he hardly dared to breathe as he turned his head slowly to his left side where the sand had parted ways enough to show him another sadistically smiling head slowly rising up from beneath the sand.

They watched each other. Arthur’s fingers flexed against their grip on his gun, his index finger moving cautiously to press against the trigger. He moved slowly, bringing his gun-hand up, preparing to swing round and shoot but, sensing the movement, the creature snapped its splintered teeth at him and launched itself with unexpected speed from the sand towards him.

Arthur wrenched himself around, gun coming up and firing wildly as the creature bore down upon him, crushing his legs even as it went straight for his head; teeth snapping just inches from his face as Arthur raised his hands, grabbing the creature between segments and holding it as far away from his face as he could manage. He could smell something very akin to putrefied flesh as the creature hissed its breath over him and he gagged.

His gun was pointed skywards now, his grip on the creature too tentative to think about loosening his hold enough to turn the gun and shoot it right through its hideous head. His arms were already shaking with the effort to hold it even an inch or two away from his face.

And then an almost familiar popping sounded from the original creature and Arthur found himself groaning with anger and frustration as he dared to take his eyes from the one in front of him to see again the morphing of body to head and the slow smile of teeth stretching across the first creature’s newly formed head.

“Goddamnit!” He cursed, thrashing his body against the creature atop him and adjusting his tentative hold around its- for lack of a better word- neck. He managed to stretch his arms out a little more for his efforts, locking the elbow of his left arm and all but clenching his eyes shut in a silent prayer as, without a choice, he loosened the hold of his right arm enough to bring his gun hand down. Using the ground to steady his aim, Arthur fired again at the first creature, turning his face from the spray of its explosion whilst simultaneously brining his gun hand back up and pointing it almost directly into the other creature’s mouth.

“Eat this,” Arthur spat before pulling the trigger with a grimace.

Instead of the expected explosion the gun clicked against the shot.

The magazine was empty.

“Oh,” he breathed, body going cold with sudden dread.

- - -

“Arthur!” Eames’ shouted again, watching helplessly as Arthur was sucked beneath the churning water. And then Eames did something infinitely stupid and reckless as he let his fingers give up their already tentative hold on the canyon wall, dropping his body back into the wild waters.

“Eames!” Cobb’s shout went ignored as Eames resurfaced from the drop, and prepared to launch himself away from the walls, determined to follow Arthur wherever the hell he was being taken.

Something slipped around his neck just as he pushed off, choking him and pulling him back against the wall. He lifted frantic hands, fingers squeezing at the flesh of an arm slung around his neck- holding him back and away from the whirlpool before him.

“Cobb,” Eames all but growled, digging his fingers into the arm holding him. He thrashed his body, trying to loosen either Cobb’s hold on him or on the wall, whatever was going to get him into the whirlpool. He cursed, choking on water as it splashed fierce waves against them.

And then, as quickly as everything had started, it stopped.

The whirlpool before them seemed to suck itself down, disappearing with nary a trace seconds later. The sky above them cleared, the waters calming to a gentle lapping, and Cobb finally released Eames. He was rewarded for his efforts with a glancing punch to his temple as Eames twisted himself around in the water, lashing out as he turned.

“What the fuck was that?” Eames shouted, pushing himself up into Cobb’s space, his face apoplectic as he spat the words into Cobb’s equally enraged face.

Cobb dropped himself back into the water, shoving his arms out and pushing Eames away from him.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Cobb cursed back, a stain of red rage high on his cheeks.

“Me?” Eames gaped at him, “Did you miss the part where Arthur was just sucked down into a whirlpool?”

“Did you?” Cobb demanded, pressing on before Eames could formulate a reply. “You don’t know what the hell that thing was or where it took him!”

If possible, Eames seemed to get even more irate at Cobb’s words.

“Which is why,” he began slowly, fighting for a calm he in no way felt, “I was tying to get to Arthur. To get him the hell out of it. You remember Arthur, don’t you, Cobb? Your best friend? The best friend you just possibly sent to his death and worse?”

It was low blow, but Eames couldn’t deny the sadistic pleasure he felt at seeing the spark of regret lighting Cobb’s gaze further.

“Or is it just Ariadne you care about now?” Eames finished, his gaze burning into Cobb’s and seeing as his entire face flushed an angry red.

“Don’t you dare,” he coughed, his voice hoarse. “Arthur’s my best friend—”

“—yeah, he’s your best friend so much you didn’t even tell him Ariadne was meant to be visiting with you this week.”

Cobb gaped at him. Eames’ smile was almost malicious, “You’re not the only one our dear Ari likes to chat with, Cobb.”

“It’s not like that,” Cobb hissed, fingers curling into fists beneath the water.

“No?” Eames asked, “So you wouldn’t have thrown yourself in after her if she’d been in Arthur’s place?”

“Of course I-!” Cobb cut himself off, slamming at the water and sending up a spray between them.

“I thought so.” Eames said. He swam away from Cobb, moving towards the middle of the canyon and diving down beneath the now-still waters. He resurfaced a couple minutes later, spitting water and curses, before diving back down again.

“What are you doing?” Cobb asked, watching reluctantly as Eames resurfaced a second time.

“What does it look like?” He scowled.

“Eames—”

“I’m going to do everything in my power to get to Arthur.” He bit out, glaring at Cobb.

“Eames, he’s gone—” Cobb tried.

Eames rounded on him. “If I have to stay here until that damned timer runs out waiting for that whirlpool to come back, I will. Don’t think I won’t do it, Cobb. Don’t.”

As if that was any kind of consolation to him right now. He wondered if this was how Arthur felt when he’d slipped down into that pipe. Wondered if Arthur felt the same dread broiling through his body, the fear and the doubt and the sickness at not knowing where he was.

“We’ll get him back,” Cobb repeated, and Eames almost felt himself deflate at the conviction in his tone, only for Cobb to then ruin his own words by speaking again. “If he’s not at the end of this level then we’ll find him in Limbo. We should get moving—”

“Let me just make one thing very clear to you, Cobb,” Eames hissed, rounding on him. “If it comes down to a decision between you and Arthur, it is always- always- going to be Arthur.”

Cobb stared at him, not exactly surprised. “It’s not,” he said a moment later.

“What?”

“It’s not a decision between Arthur and me. It’s between Arthur and Ariadne.” Cobb found himself not-quite able to enjoy the pained look that flashed across Eames’ face at his words.

“I love Ariadne,” Eames finally said, dragging the words out as if pained, “I really do, but,” he hesitated a long moment before meeting Cobb’s eyes square on, his voice softer when he next spoke. “I’m not waking up without Arthur.”

Cobb found himself unable to hide his surprise at that admission. They stared at each other, tense, waiting.

“How long?” Cobb finally asked, swallowing heavily around the words.

Eames clenched his jaw a moment, gaze flickering away and then back as he came to a decision. “Long enough.”

“I- I didn’t know,” Cobb admitted.

“You weren’t meant to,” Eames said. He felt his anger leaking from him, leaving him weary and aching and feeling more than a little bit lost. “You know how Arthur can be. You had a lot on your plate and he was adamant about maintaining a level of professionalism whenever we were working together. There just never seemed to be a right time, you know?”

“Eames- I’m sorry.” Cobb looked just as miserable as he felt.

“Yeah.” Eames shrugged. “Look, you’d better go ahead.”

And just like that whatever moment they were having was gone. Cobb pursed his lips.

“What happens when we reach the fortress?” he asked tightly.

“If we get there before you, we’ll wait for the timer on this level to run out before going down.”

“And what if I’m first? Am I supposed to wait for you? What if you two don’t make it? Someone needs to stay behind…”

“I am not having this conversation with you, Cobb.” Eames growled. “You can either stay here with me and help me find Arthur, or you can bugger off and make your own way to the end. Either way I’m not leaving.”

“What happened to your sense of self-preservation?” Cobb needled.

Eames flashed him a toothy smile then, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes as the sky above them began to darken once again. “Oh, don’t you worry about that.” He promised before diving down beneath the now choppy waters.

With a curse, Cobb dived under too. But not to follow, choosing instead to take his chances with cave number four before the full force of the rejuvenated whirlpool could suck him under with Eames.